AbstractAny attempt to outline a meteorological aesthetics centered
on so-called beautiful weather has to overcome several difficulties: In everyday life, the appreciation of the
weather is mostly related to practical interests or reduced to the ideal of stereotypical
fine weather that is conceived according to blue-sky thinking irrespective of
climate diversity. Also, an aesthetics
of fine weather seems, strictly speaking, to be impossible given that such
weather conditions usually allow humans to focus on aspects other than weather,
which contradicts the autotelic character of beauty. The unreflective equation of beautiful weather
with moderately sunny weather and a cloudless sky also collides with the
psychological need for variation: even living
in a “paradisal” climate would be condemned to end in monotony. Finally, whereas fine weather is related in modern
realistic literature to cosmic harmony and a universal natural order, contemporary
literary examples show that in the age of the climate change, fine weather may
be deceitful and its passive contemplation, irresponsible. This implies the necessity of a reflective
aesthetic attitude on weather, as influenced by art, literature, and science,
which discovers the poetics of bad weather and the wonder that underlies
average weather conditions.

Like politics or sports, weather is a matter of
general interest, however it doesn't cause disagreements. De
gustibus disputandum, sed de tempestate non disputandum est because who would be disposed to argue about the
weather? Weather does not split
communities, but it does not build them either. If we do not dispute weather, do we really
discuss it? A writer describes the
weather only when she has nothing else to write about, just like when one
speaks about weather if one has nothing to say, remarked Tolstoy.[2] Besides, it is commonly
assumed that this topic can be handled quite “objectively:” we are convinced that we all know how fine
weather has to look: sunny, mostly cloudless,
with moderate temperature, and average humidity, possibly with a light breeze. The fact that this representation may be
confined to regions with a temperate, continental climate is usually
overlooked, and the dwellers’ of the desert longing for thick cloudscapes that promise
rain or their exuberant reaction to snow rather cause disconcertment and
amusement than challenge the cliché about how fine weather should be. Not even our own yearning for “bad"
weather in times of a prolonged drought does not dispel the stereotype of the ideal
weather as sunny. But do beautiful and
fine weather have to be synonymous? For
example, fine weather is always good forsomething, mostly for someone’s
activity outdoors, be it agriculture, transport, road repair, or sport. And there is no particular weather that would suit
all practical purposes; in other words, “weather is always unfair.”[3]

As frequently as everyday life is permeated by small
talk on weather, as deep is the silence on it in aesthetic theory, given its aesthetic
impurity and complexity. The
appreciation of weather conditions is linked to vital and ethical values and
embedded in various cultural contexts. Therefore,
in order to be able to achieve aesthetic appreciation of weather conditions,
the subject has not only to free herself from any practical interests, with
their corresponding practices, ranging from magical conjuring of rain to geo-engineering,
but also to overcome any presumable meteo-dependency, which makes the
appreciation of weather depend on physiological criteria of corporeal and
emotional well-being.

Moreover, the
multisensory dimension of weather contradicts the priority of the so-called “theoretical
senses”[4] of sight and hearing in
modern aesthetics. These are also the
senses that allow the subject to perceive a phenomenon from a safe position
without exposing her to extremely uncomfortable or even dangerous situations. As Kant emphasized, in cases of turbulent
weather conditions, a complicated dispositif
is required to alleviate spontaneous fear in the subject with the discovery of
the source of the sublime and enable an indirect aesthetic satisfaction.[5] For a long time, weather and extraordinary
celestial phenomena were not free from mythic, religious, and mantic interpretations,
and fear was stronger than awe. Even in
our times, the practical function of the weather forecast still takes
precedence over aesthetic admiration.

To
put it roughly, weather is far too complex and subjective for traditional
aesthetics of natural beauty, and even in art it remains a minor topic, coming
to the fore only in landscape painting. In
sum, one either identifies beautiful weather too hastily as the cliché of fine
weather in their own climate, which makes any further aesthetic analysis
pointless, or one has to be willing to engage in an endless discussion on how
relative are the ideals of weather in various climates worldwide. In both cases, the issue of what beautiful
weather really is seems to discourage from the outset any possibility of
fruitful aesthetic analysis.

2. Cloudscapes and earthscapes

And still, attempts have been undertaken recently by Arnold
Berleant,[6] Holmes Rolston III,[7] and David Macauley[8] to introduce a
“celestial,” “meteorological,” and "aerial" aesthetics, while the “aerographic”
descriptions in the field of material geography are not exempt from aesthetic
implications.[9]
Strikingly enough, several of these authors
focus precisely on experiences of what is commonly called bad weather related
to clouds, rain, fog, and snow. For
example, Rolston emphasizes the fluctuation of weather conditions in comparison
with the regularities of the climate: “This sky is reconstructed daily, even
hourly.”[10] Also his polemic against the blue-sky thinking
is meant to defend the clouds as aesthetically stimulating: cloudwatching evokes a broader range of moods
than the awe and wonder that accompany the usual examples of watching the stars
or sunsets.

In contrast to other celestial events that were prone
to mythological interpretations, the contemplation of cloudscapes is closest to
the ideal type of an aesthetic experience and generates an aesthetic attitude
at three levels, at least. First, the
observer draws enjoyment from the pure play of forms, textures, and colors. Also, one is attuned to the various moods and
emotional atmospheres suggested by the ever-changing cloudscapes. The ongoing
metamorphosis of the sky leaves imprints on “moodscapes” as inner landscapes. This
mutability, which Goethe once called the drama of the clouds, entitles the
beholder to assign a capricious or “moody” temper to the weather: the mobility and fluidity of
cloudscapes are a reflection of life.

Finally, the sky serves as a
screen for imaginative projections; clouds improvise abundantly and the
game of recognizing objects or animals in cumulus clouds is as enjoyable for
children as it is for adults. The aesthetic enjoyment originates in this
case from the surprising analogies one is able to detect between extraterrestrial
space and earth. Even Aristotle
explained the pleasure humans draw from mimesis
through the cognitive mechanism of recognition.[11] The less one can presume an intentional author
behind a seemingly meaningful form, the stronger is the enjoyment. According to Martin Steel, these three aspects
configure nature as a space of sensory contemplation, as a place of
affective correspondences, and as a stage for imagination.[12] In addition to this, in cultural history clouds
often symbolized freedom, doom, or the disguised presence of the divine.[13]

Cloudwatching is a gratifying occupation as much for the daydreamers’
disinterested attention as for the scientists’ keen observation; sometimes both
“souls” dwell in a single person, if we think of Goethe. In our day such cloud-lovers founded the Cloud
Appreciation Society, whose members are spread all over the world. Its manifesto says:

We believe that clouds are
unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them. We think that they are Nature’s poetry, and
the most egalitarian of her displays, since everyone can have a fantastic view
of them. We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky
thinking’ wherever we find it. Life
would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day. We seek to remind people that clouds are
expressions of the atmosphere’s moods, and can be read like those of a person’s
countenance. Clouds are so commonplace
that their beauty is often overlooked. They
are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul.[14]

Modern air transport makes it possible to see clouds
also from the air. Cloudwatching from
below and the aerial photography of earthscapes imply opposite perspectives, the
photographer having her “head in the clouds” in two different ways. They imply different weather conditions, as
well, given that pictures of earthscapes can mostly be taken in “fine,”
cloudless weather. And this brings me to
another difficulty in outlining an aesthetics of what is called fine weather: the physical atmosphere in general is the
medium of life, and as a medium, is mostly ignored and is only noticed when it
contradicts its function. Indeed, the
atmospheric conditions of so-called fine weather correspond optimally to the
medial character of weather, which tends to become inconspicuous in three ways:

First, it has a mostly average positive
effect on the subject’s well-being. Only
the effect of contrast, as when sunny weather interrupts a long period of rainy,
stormy, or gloomy days, may enhance the feeling of how fine sunny weather
really is.

Second, in terms of
perception, fine weather does not require any particular physical adaptation. Above all, it makes possible the greatest
visibility of earthly phenomena. Therefore,
to enjoy the weather often means to enjoy the view of wide landcapes and
waterscapes, to take pleasure in panoramas from the top of a mountain, or to
look down at remote earthscapes from a plane, but not to enjoy the weather for itself.

And third, because of this corporeal comfort
and visual facilitation, fine weather enables humans to carry out their everyday
activities and simply ignore what is “up in the air:” fine weather is often fine just because we
take notice of it only to forget it in the next moment. And this leads to the following paradox: in everyday life, the best weather appears to
be the weather one does not become aware
of, and conceals itself as a mediumof life, and a frame for practices.

Psychologically
speaking, fine weather corresponds to a kind of point zero of experience that tends
to pass for normal and therefore is ignored.
For this reason, an aesthetics of fine weather appears to be de facto impossible as a meteorological aesthetics because of its
centrifugal aspect: ideal weather is
seldom enjoyed in itself, but mostly throws one constantly outside the weather
to what “really counts.” To put it
differently, ascribing beauty to fine weather would contradict the autotelic
character of beauty, being a means for something different, for the subject’s
well-being, perception, and life in general.

On the contrary, it seems easier from this perspective to pay attention and
even to contemplate aesthetically the deviations from this “point zero” of our
experience of meteorological events. When
fog, rain, or snow – all earthly epiphenomena of the clouds – make us feel
stricken, blur the image of the world, and keep us from abandoning ourselves to
outdoor activities, the weather compels our attention. At the same time, “bad” weather conditions also
influence the perception of what is seen through or, rather, behind them and
change the classical beauty of clearly designed landscapes into a rather romantic
beauty of scenes that emanate atmospheres and shape different moodscapes.

Emile Cioran, David Le Breton, and Georges Perec, to name just a few essayists, were all sensitive to the poetic dimension of what common sense calls
bad weather.[15]
For example, Cioran, who was well-known
for his radical pessimism, wandered for hours in foggy weather and proclaimed
the fog as “the only thing which has never disappointed me, the most beautiful
achievement on the surface of the earth.”[16] More recently, a journey through fog-bound
shoreline motivated Craig Martin to reflect on how the opacity of fog temporarily
“confiscates the horizon” and causes disorientation.[17]

Nevertheless, it is precisely this visual
obstruction that brings into light the relation usually neglected between
vision and the “embodied immersion in aerial space.”[18] In phenomenological terms, the experience of
wandering amidst the fog enhances the awareness of being-in-the-world and being
entangled bodily with the world, instead
of assuming a disembodied subject who would watch it from a position outside
the world. The absence of such
experiences of atmospheric phenomena in phenomenology therefore appears all the
more surprising with the notable exception of Luce Irigaray.[19]

Also, when the clouds settle on earth as fog,
the obstruction of visibility compels the subject to acknowledge that the air
is always in-between the seer and the object and, although it usually remains
invisible, it is a material medium of
perception. The atmospheric phenomena of
fog, rain, and snow, no less than the clouds, as “phenomena situated broadly
between air and water on an elemental perceptual scale,”[20] make the air that is
saturated with humidity “come out” into the realm of visibility. The aerial space becomes itself a phenomenon
and this is the primary
condition for the possibility of its aesthetic theory.

3. The natural order, between paradise and apocalypse

However, one may argue that deviations from the
general “taste” for fine weather concern individual preferences rather than the description
of the weather conditions. How fine weather should be cannot cause any
divergence of opinions. The universal
character of ideal weather seems to find confirmation in Saint Ephrem the
Syrian’s vision of paradise.[21] In his fictitious meteorology, the atmosphere
is “temperate,” without any significant variations throughout the year, and provides
optimal conditions for the fertility of the soil. Also “the months’ tempests are overcome” so
that they cannot “pollute the glorious air.”[22] Surprisingly enough, this constant weather is conceived
in analogy to chastity, while the instability of the weather on Earth suggests a
disordered sexual life. Just like the
Christian moral ideal proposes to defeat passions in order to achieve apatheia or serenity, the weather in
Eden excludes any “harmful frost” or “scorching heat.”[23]

It is now time to ask whether this ideal of climate
has changed since the fourth century. Is
the modern tourist’s “pilgrimage” from the northern half of the globe to the climatically
“blessed” countries of the south different, in essence, from travel to a
climatic paradise? A meteorological aesthetics is apparently not
subject to any historical evolution. To
consider fine weather banal and to warn that the tourist’s delightful
consumption of never changing fine weather would necessarily end in boredom are
still exceptions, if not explicit provocations, as in the following statement
by F. C. Delius: “I do not
understand why the Caribbean is such a desirable place. Three weeks of nothing but sunshine, alright,
but to have this the whole year? This
would be a nightmare for me.”[24] The situatedness of his own attitude, used to
the variety of the European climate, is left unquestioned again, as is usual in
issues related to the weather.

As a matter of fact, fine weather nowadays could turn
into a nightmare in other respects, as well. We have lost any innocence concerning the
weather and, after having tasted from the tree of knowledge, face scientists' alarm
that fine weather may be a treacherous sign of global warming. The parameters of fine weather are indeed far
from being the same everywhere; permanent sunshine and mild weather at the
poles should alert rather than delight us. Fine weather has come under suspicion, and climate
change opened a second age of bad conscience after Christianity.

We all know that fine weather here may be
compensated by desertification, floods, and hurricanes elsewhere, and there is
no doubt that weather conditions are local. They can strongly vary within a small area,
but belong nevertheless to a complex global system that shows no respect for political
borders or economic interests. To follow
Delius once more, humanity has always imagined the apocalypse as tremendously
severe weather, but the real end of the world may come, on the contrary, in
fine weather. This could be a thrilling
literary topic waiting to be developed.[25]

In modern realistic literature, the description of
weather conditions generally introduces the presentation of characters and narrative
episodes. The meteorological aspects
specify the moment of an action and
serve as a parergon, accessory, or frame for the narrative. It's typical for the realistic novel to place
such a meteorological description at the beginning of a story line, as in
Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities,
where he resorts surprisingly to the scientific language of meteorology in
order to describe a fine day:

There was a
depression over the Atlantic. It was
travelling eastwards, towards an area of high pressure over Russia, and still
showed no tendency to move northwards around it. The isotherms and isotheres were fulfilling
their functions. The atmospheric temperature
was in proper relation to the average annual temperature, the temperature of
the coldest as well as of the hottest month, and the a-periodic monthly
variation in temperature. The rising and
setting of the sun and of the moon, the phases of the moon, Venus and Saturn’s
rings, and many other important phenomena, were in accordance with the
forecasts in the astronomical yearbooks. The vapour in the air was at its highest
tension, and the moisture in the air was at its lowest. In short, to use an expression that describes
the facts pretty satisfactorily, even though it is somewhat old-fashioned: it was a fine August day in the year 1913.[26]

Weather,
however, rarely provides a neutral frame for narration, usually “each author
builds his own sky.”[27]
In Romanticism, weather descriptions
evoke emotional atmospheres and are projections of the characters’ moods. Realistic writers prefer to indirectly invest weather
with meaning; finally, severe weather conditions and natural catastrophes
trigger actions and give the protagonists the opportunity to unravel their real
“nature” in spectacular, heroic gestures. In the first two cases, weather expresses the
consonance between the protagonist and nature; in the third case, weather plays
the role of a narrative agent and is mostly opposed to human interests. All three situations require the reader’s empathic
response and imply specific values.

Even in so-called bürgerlicher
Realismus the author manipulates weather conditions in order to indirectly transmit
a set of values and conventions to the reader. According to Delius, weather mantles a
specific ideology: it makes the fictitious reality comprehensible and suggests
the existence of a transcendental ethical counterpart of the human actions, which
consists in a cosmic harmony and order. His
analysis of the relationship between “the hero and his weather” in about sixty
German realistic novels from the second half of the nineteenth century gives
evidence that good weather always confirms the triumph of virtuous characters
and accompanies a happy destiny, while unsettled and stormy weather is
appropriate to immoral acts and vicious characters.

On the whole, this Weltanschauung builds a closed universe in which the sky reflects
the events below and occasionally even influences the course of human action. This literary strategy expresses a certain
need to transcend the human dimension of action without resorting to
mythological or religious forces. The sky
is idealized to represent a higher order in a secularized society; weather
makes the ethical order seem natural and constructs its own “mythology of the
universal.”[28]

The ideological message of the weather to
the reader is double. Either the social
relationships are endorsed by an extra-social order and naturalized so that the
narrative enables the reader to feel secure in a rational, almost Hegelian
world and prompts them to accept the social order to receive full gratification.
Or the social critique is rejected and
replaced by withdrawal into inwardness, which is also Kierkegaard’s term for
subjectivity. The first way leads to
social conformism and the idealization of obedience; the second one ends in alienation
and inner exile. Yet in both forms, such
novels suggest a higher harmony and eventually fulfill the reader’s
expectations.

Delius, who published his book in the 1970s, is still
convinced that extensive weather descriptions and the literary techniques of
harmonizing weather and characters have been exhausted in modern literature,
and that they have survived only in its popular genres. On the contrary, the modern German Hochroman prefers to parody and satirize
the former conventional use of weather or to describe the atmospheric phenomena
in an impersonal, almost scientific manner, independently of the action. If references to the weather conditions are not
simply missing, they are generally concise and confined to stereotypes. The authors avoid any mythological
connotations of weather events and undermine the reader’s unconscious impulse to
develop empathy. Delius’ opinion of the current
irrelevance of weather is shared by another critic, Iris Radisch, who regrets
the disappearance of weather subjects in German contemporary literature.[29] Still, this opinion has to be revised in light
of the writers’ recently renewed interest in the climate change.

While the realistic writers of the nineteenth century generally
draw a parallel
between beautiful weather and the protagonist’s happiness and success, fine
sunny weather is seldom used in literature as a contrasting background for tragic
episodes. Still, fine weather may conceal traps, like in Jean Paul’s Des Luftschiffers Giannozzo Seebuch, in
whichthe air traveler escapes
thunder-storms only to succumb absurdly to lightning on a fine day. Also, in J. D. Salinger’s short story, A Perfect Day for Bananafish, nothing in
the air or in the hero’s behavior announces his suicide.[30] The fine weather, along with the alert style
and arresting dialogues, catches the reader’s attention and completely conceals
the character’s emotional disorder.

In our day, vivid
discussion about the greenhouse effect has also engaged writers and
scriptwriters; booming doomsday scenarios bespeak what John Urry called “the
new catastrophism” or “epochalism.”[31] From the list of recent eco-thrillers, let me
consider here Ilija Trojanow’s EisTau.[32] The protagonist of the novel, Zeno, is a
researcher of glaciers who falls into despair after watching the end of a
glacier in the Alps. Like Jean Paul’s
“astronaut,” he keeps a log on a cruise to the Antarctic on which he is an
expedition leader, and delivers scientific lectures to guests who do not wish
to listen to his warnings of climatic collapse.

Also like Giannozzo, Zeno seeks
for a refuge from an irresponsible society but, in contrast to his predecessor,
he cannot escape his human compatriots even at the end of the world. Zeno is
disgusted by the factitiousness of his previous life as a scientist and now by the
life of such travelers, who call themselves “environmental activists,” yet are
not willing to adopt a sustainable way of life. “The weather is mild, the mood euphoric” when a
party is thrown on the ship, with barbecue and dancing to the music of “sunshine,
sunshine reggae.”[33]
Both Zeno’s and Gianozzo’s ends are
tragic. The harmony that formally
reigned between the modern hero and the weather has now been lost forever. Having to decide between humans and nature, Trojanow
opts for misanthropy as the lesser evil in the name of the planet, and makes
his alter ego declare: “We have to thrust man from his pedestal in
order to save him.”[34] The writer turns in the end into a spokesman for
holistic thinking.

4. Meteorological aesthetics in the anthropocene

To resume the
previous argument, what common sense calls beautiful weather is usually left
unquestioned, given its synonymy with fine weather and the strength of the
cliché about what fine weather should be like, irrespective of the diversity of
climates with their presumably different “ideal” weather conditions. Furthermore, fine weather only seldom becomes
an object of reflection, given the priority of practical interests in everyday
life and the tendency of so-called fine weather not to be attended and to remain
in the background as a mere medium of life and practical activity. Another objection to the common blue-sky
thinking is determined by the general need for variation: constantly blue sky and sunny weather would inevitably
result in boredom, but the same goes for any kind of weather. On the whole, this means that what is usually
considered fine weather cannot be dismissed de
jure from a positive aesthetic attitude but has only to be placed in a larger
context.

As a matter of
fact, the positive appreciation of the weather in any region of the globe is related
to a short-term pattern (fine weather interrupts a series of less “fine” days)
and, at the same time, is embedded in a more general spatial and temporal context.
(What is considered fine weather depends
on the local climate, the season, and the moment of the day.) In other words, fine weather is not fine as
such but in relation to its contextual framing, and it gains its appeal from contrast
with normal conditions. How beauty can
emerge from contrast is a well-known psychological law of perception; however,
the issue of normality requires further discussion, which allows me to take up
again the issue raised by Trojanow. For
example, if fine weather repeatedly contradicts our expectations about “normal”
weather according to the natural climatic cycle, moral considerations related
to climate change eventually take precedence over both aesthetic reasons and
short-term practical interests. To put
it differently, it would be irresponsible to wish for no rain, fog, storm, or
snow only because they impede one’s activities.

Therefore, for
any meteorological aesthetics to be developed one should, on one hand, endeavor
to extend the common positive appreciation of fine weather to instances of “bad
weather,” beyond the theory of the dynamical
sublime, with its focus on catastrophes. Aesthetic reflection can help us acknowledge
that aesthetically appealing meteorological events are not confined to those
weather conditions that imply comfort or security and enable us to carry out
leisure activities outdoors. On the other
hand, a purely aesthetic appreciation of the weather has to be restricted in
our day by a moral perspective. The
vivid colors of the pollution sunsets may make these appear sensational, but
the knowledge of their source – the aerosols produced by human activity – tempers
the admiration and inhibits the allegedly “disinterested” aesthetic attitude. As Trojanow’s above-mentioned episode
emphasized, one now has good reasons to raise the question of the proper
aesthetic attitude towards atmospheric events. And this issue splits the traditional unanimity
about fine weather into environmentally committed people and naïve or egoistic
consumers of weather.

Which aesthetic
theory would then fit activist writers like Trojanow and the public concerned with
environment? Obviously, this can hardly
be the neo-Romantic ökologische Ästhetik
or Naturästhetik that both Gernot
Böhme and Martin Seel outlined in the 1980s and 1990s. In the new context of the post-carbon or Anthropocene
age (Paul Crutzen), when humans turned from passive recipients of weather into
weathermakers, “to have one’s head in the clouds” does not necessarily mean any
more to be exalted and out of touch with the real world. On the contrary, it is to be aware of the
present environmental dangers and to assume responsibility, including restricting
one's need for stereotypical “beauty” and restraining oneself from
shortsightedly consuming “beautiful weather” at the expense of sustainability.

Thus a meteorological aesthetics endorses
Berleant’s humanistic conviction about the general basic convergence between
aesthetic and moral values, yet without confounding them: “Ultimately the morality of beauty and the
beauty of morality cannot be kept separate. Each enhances and contributes to the other.”[35] As a matter of fact, what is at stake in the
attempt to outline a meteorological aesthetics of our age is the proper
configuration of a triad of values, in which the aesthetic and the moral values
are connected and mediated by scientific knowledge. The attitude of an aesthetic of unreflective
ingenuousness, supposedly legitimized by aesthetic disinterestedness and correlated
with scientific ignorance, is not pardonable in the age of media and technology.
New media grant open access to
information, and the scope of the influence achieved by technology makes it unavoidable
to inquire about the real causes of a meteorological event, including what is
commonly regarded as fine weather. Normality
makes its comeback as a value, although in other fields than in modernity, where
it led to all sorts of social discrimination.

To continue, in
spite of the basic difference between the aesthetic, moral, and theoretical
attitudes, the aesthetic appreciation of weather depends on extra-aesthetic
judgments regarding the normality of natural order. Anyway, the environmental sciences and environmental
ethics do not necessarily have to inhibit positive aesthetic appreciation but
may open new dimensions of environmental “beauty,” as the general term for aesthetic
value. For example, they are able to raise
the awareness of climate change and at the same time to enhance aesthetic experience,
by shifting the focus of aesthetic appreciation from dramatic weather shows to
less conspicuous weather conditions.

To
refer again to Trojanow’s example, the awareness of how vulnerable the huge
masses of glaciers have become because of the greenhouse effect intensifies the
impression of their majestic beauty by contrasting it to their ephemerality and
fragility. Humans may even begin to see
the beauty of some landscapes only when they are confronted with the prospect that
they may well disappear. In any case,
such a change of perspective presupposes extending the reference system used in
evaluating the weather and relating the meteorological dynamics no longer to individual
well-being but to the function of the atmosphere in enabling and preserving the
environment. One implication of this
shift is the desubjectification of
judgments of weather, opening, as well, the possibility of arguing for
certain overall limits about the weather: de
tempestate disputandum est.

This shift of
perspective has already been suggested by some environmental ethicists. For example, Holmes Rolston III regards
rarity, richness, and complexity as aspects of natural value, and interprets spontaneity, in relation to the diversity of species and
landscapes, as the testimony to “exuberance in nature” and an “inventive
natural history.”[36]
His statements can be extended to the
field of atmospheric events as well. The proteanism of weather conditions
expresses the spontaneity of nature, while the diversity of climate and the
complexity of the atmospheric system are the achievement of an immemorial
natural history that started long before the appearance of the human species. Thus, scientific reflection enables us to
place the average aesthetic appreciation of the weather in a broader context in
which the magnitude of the spatial scale (weather events as part of the complex
system of the atmosphere) is doubled by the magnitude of the temporal scale
(the atmosphere as result of an unimaginably long process).

In the light of minimal scientific literacy, particular
weather conditions that tend to be flatly dismissed in everyday life as being
“normal for the season” suddenly reveal their hidden basis: the normality (of both fine and inclement
weather) begins to rise to the surface, like the base of an iceberg. To set forth Rolston’s argument, we may
acknowledge that the hypercomplex system called Earth is such a wonder, instead
of chasing after other more eye-catching yet ultimately far less significant wonders.
We may rediscover humility and learn to
think on other scales, “like a mountain” for Aldo Leopold or “like a planet”
for his followers Paul Hirsch and Bryan Norton.[37] This reflection allows the aesthetic subject
to exchange spectatorship for participation in a cosmic drama, and to somehow
expand one's individual identity by extending the capacity to feel awe for what
is “natural” and taken for granted.

My plea here for
a reflective aesthetic attitude toward weather conditions is meant to combat
both the poor blue-sky thinking that underlies widespread consumption of
tourist destinations at long distances, and the avidity for the “sublimity” of
catastrophes that are consumed in disaster tourism and permanently abetted by turning
the weather into a spectacle by the new media, including weather photography
and weather reports converted into weather shows. The alternative would be a
sort of responsibility in forming and satisfying aesthetic interests, for
example by seeking less intensive experiences and becoming sensitive to the
poetics of the everyday weather, both fine and bad. The aesthetic consumption of the weather could
be replaced by an aesthetic enjoyment that would learn from literature and art that
inclement weather has an inexhaustible reservoir of aesthetical values called
atmospheres or moodscapes, and from science that the most banal weather
conditions deserve our entire perceptual attention as a starting point for any
aesthetic experience.

In any case, a meteorological aesthetics is
inseparable from the cosmopolitan attitude John Urry urged. Unlike other forms of cosmopolitanism, aesthetic
cosmopolitanism is a natural and universal attitude, and the Cloud Appreciation
Society, which calls for a new “Internationale” by proclaiming more or less
ironically, “Cloud Lovers, Unite!,” is a good example of how the aesthetic appreciation
of nature is not irrevocably condemned to be stranded in individualistic
enjoyment but, on the contrary, may also inspire the founding of new aesthetic communities
that may be otherwise quite heterogeneous. This social and holistic thinking contrasts
with the individualistic notion of aesthetic behavior conceived as private
contemplation that we can still find in the neo-Romantic aesthetics of nature.

Nevertheless, it may be argued that this does
not necessarily imply the complete rejection of traditional aesthetics of
contemplation but only its transformation. If
the climate virtue-moralists require a “new goodness,” aestheticians can remind
them that, according to Kant, the “immediate
interest in the beauty of nature”
is “always the mark of a good soul” and that the habitual interest and
intentional contemplation of nature “indicate
a frame of mind favorable to the moral feeling.”[38] At the same time, the tradition of the
aesthetical contemplation of nature has to be adapted to our age in which the
perception of the weather is commonly mediated by science and new media.

Finally, a meteorological aesthetics has to tackle several
other issues that can only be briefly listed here, such as: How can the accuracy of prediction and the complexity of visualization
influence the weather perception? How could
we balance the visual spectacularization of the weather in weather shows and
its poor verbal counterpart in the mass culture? Can scientific descriptions compensate for the
contemporary writers’ lack of interest in weather descriptions? Given its basis in perception, the aesthetic
attitude is perhaps the most direct way of noticing the effects of climate
change. How, then, could an aesthetic
theory of the sky support the necessity of a corresponding ethics that would
enhance the awareness of global interdependence? Finally, if we agree on the necessity to adopt
new cultural models, to develop new institutions, and to perform a “shift in
the core metaphor”[39] by overcoming the modern metaphor
of productivity and creativity, how could aesthetics contribute to this social
and cultural change?

Mădălina Diaconu is Privatdozentin for Philosophy at
the University of Vienna. Her latest publications are Sinnesraum Stadt. Eine
multisensorische Anthropologie (Berlin: Lit, 2012) and Phänomenologie der Sinne
(Stuttgart: Reclam, 2013). She published in Contemporary Aesthetics
“Reflections on an Aesthetics of Touch, Smell and Taste“ (vol. 4, 2006), “City Walks and Tactile Experience“ (vol. 9,
2011) and "Grasping the Wind? Aesthetic
Participation, between Cognition and Immersion" (vol. 11, 2013).

Published on February 3, 2015.

*
This article received the "Article of the Year in the Field of Aesthetics for 2016" award by the Finnish Society for Aesthetics together with the
Slovak Association for Aesthetics for the best article published in the field
of aesthetics. To read more about this award, visit: finnishsocietyforaesthetics.blogspot.com.

[8] David Macauley, “Head in the
Clouds: On the Beauty of the Aerial World,” Environment, Space, Place, 2, 1 (Spring
2010), 147-184.

[9] See the section on “aerographies”
in Society and Space: Environment and
Planning D (2011, Vol. 29, No. 3
June), 435-550. The guest editors of the special topic of the issue, Mark
Jackson and Maria Fannin, unveil the crust, the solid or the Earth as the
implicit elemental assumption of geography and welcome the recent revival of
materialism in philosophy by focusing on aerial phenomena, in the hope that
these may heuristically lead to extended ontologies and ecological theories
(“Letting geography fall where it may – aerographies address the elemental,” op. cit., pp. 435-444). The essays they
selected deal with “atmospheric attunements” (Kathleen Stewart), the “'aerography'
of ethereal space” (Kenneth R. Olwig), the experience of fog (Craig Martin),
the airborne contagion (Peta Mitchell), but also with art projects related to
celestial events (Yuriko Saito), etc.